Noted marketing and branding genius Kanye West said in an Adweek interview published today that the recent deal between Apple and Beats Electronics only came about because Apple rival Samsung inked a deal with Jay Z. In Kanye’s view, this makes all the sense in the world.

West says that without Samsung’s deal, the California tech giant would have never have considered purchasing the headphone manufacturer and its associated music streaming service that directly competed with Apple’s own offerings.

West also said:

“When people think celebrity, which is the highest form of communication—we’re like walking networks or TV shows or brands in ourselves—you don’t think good taste,” he said. “And I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It’s like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design. Because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.”

OK then.

For what it’s worth, Tim Cook once noted that Apple has been talking to Beats for a decade or so now. It hardly seems plausible that the acquisition happened solely because Samsung held up a beacon and showed Apple the path to credibility.

Kayne is a juvenile with a talent for rapping and nothing else. Cue and Tim have already said why Apple bought Beats: great talent, not just deal maker extraordinaire, but Beats 550 employees, an Apple-styled curated music streaming service done right, and hardware, a way for Apple to fast track their way into the wearable market with cool overear headphones — only now designed and engineered by Apple with Beats branding and market share behind them. He said it was a no brainer and I believe them. And other future avenues like wireless speakers.

Wouldn’t at all surprise me if Apple’s long term goal with Beats headphones is to replace the iPod with them using your iWatch (or your iPhone) as the viewer/controller for your music.

All major media say what kind of copycats Shamesung are. Can’t help noticing similarity between all their iPad-like tablets and iPhone-like phones and the original Apple products. You mean features like finger print scanner they added recently just because new iPhone has it? Or pointless things like that touch thing where you can touch two phones to send data between them. Cool feature, I could ring my friend from a phone booth and ask him to come over because I want to send him an email. Damn cool.

how could Apple not put a new feature in a phone that samesung hasn’t tried? (and failed) it’s ok just sit back and let apple show you how computing is done. The things they showed at the conference weren’t eveolutionary (like the s5) they were revolutionary in an oddly subtle way. We’ll have to wait and see how fully fleshed out all of it is when it comes out but even so apple layed down a road map for the next 3-5 years and it sounds exciting

Samsung fans are so weird they spend all their time on an Apple-exclusive website called 9to5mac. A wholly embarassing company Samsung are. Just pathetic is what they stand for. Go read that vanity fair article:

I don’t understand why Kanye is being pilloried all over the web right now for these statements. He’s not a very smart man and he has a lot of trouble with communication, but he’s not malicious and if you parse what he’s trying to say here back into English, it’s not clear that he is wrong about this.

Obviously Apple had more, as well as better reasons to buy Beats that those he mentions, but that doesn’t mean that the reasons he mentions weren’t part of it. This article, as well as the others I have seen on the same topic come across as bullying to me.

It’s just making fun of a person with limited intelligence and communication skills and an opportunity for people to say nasty things about him in the comments.

Holy shit. Even as someone who loves Kanye (Though I do disagree on the limited intelligence piece, but I agree with the limited communication skill) This is the nail on the fucking head right here. Not one of the articles reviewing the original piece even mention his appreciation for Apple, OR his fucking mention and admiration of Steve Jobs (and apple culture in general). It’s basically trying to make him look stupid by ripping a single quote and blowing it out of proportion. That’s not even what the article was really about…

Kanye West is a rude, self-indulgent racist. No one cares that he likes Apple (btw, is there really a reason someone would dislike Apple considering Apple’s incomparably superior innovation skills?). He has made several bigoted remarks in public. Not to mention his Grammy faux pas where he snatched the microphone from Taylor Swift (during her acceptance speech for her first award) to proclaim that Beyonce’ deserved the Grammy more than Taylor. He exudes bad taste and no talent. Obviously he was poorly reared and has done nothing through the years to correct the problem.

Kanye can be a little out there at times, but I don’t think he is that far off the mark with this one. Samsung has been able to utilize celebrities in order to get the Galaxy line into the limelight. This wasn’t just Jay-Z, they did some marketing with Prince at SXSW a few years back…and do we dare mention the Academy Award selfie that “tweeted around the world.”

If this isn’t enough, then you might not find it curious that Apple was actively searching for a “Marketing Buzz” Director and staff just a week prior to the leak of the Beats deal. And shortly after, Beats launches a five plus minute World Cup spot featuring Neymar with his Beats upon his head while being prominently attached to…his iPhone

Coincidence???

Hey, I happen to like Beats Music, but I have a hard time believing that nor the headphone hardware was what was of importance to Apple. To the contrary, it was the opportunity to acquire the only brand that was as ubiquitous at it and, in doing so, just gained a stocked stable of celebrities to pitch iProducts to the youth market.

He is definitely clueless, or just someone to pity. I don’t believe anyone would confuse KW with anyone having class. Funny, I think KK maybe should be the one people feel sorry for actually marrying KW. And that is one hard step considering the K clan, how they trash up their lives for the sake of TV money.